Raj Singh discusses Hartlepool United's sustainability situation amid the coronavirus pandemic as fans offer their support with 'budget booster'

The club released its accounts for the 2018-19 season last month which revealed an £860,000 loss during the campaign.

Those losses are believed to have been reduced during the 2019-20 season and will be cut even further looking ahead to next season – whenever that may be.

Football shutting down due to the coronavirus pandemic cost Pools roughly £100,000 in matchday income from their final four home matches that were cancelled at the end of the 19-20 campaign.

But the financial implications are significantly more far-reaching than that.

A lack of clarity over when the next season will start leaves Pools and many other clubs without any substantial form of revenue while they still have bills and staff to pay.

Players and staff at Hartlepool are currently furloughed while others have been made redundant to relieve some financial pressure.

The club’s records published on Companies House state: “The company depends on the continued financial support from Clarence 18 Ltd [Raj Singh].”

It went on to mention that the club should have sufficient resources to ‘continue operational existence’ for the next 12 months despite the impact of Covid-19.

“We’ve got to look at what we’re going to sustain and how long this coronavirus will last,” Singh said in response to how long he will remain at Hartlepool.

“There’s talk about no matches until the New Year so who will buy a season ticket if we tell people that? So that’s another £400,000 with season ticket money.

“Am I expected to put that 400k in as well? I don’t know. The honest answer is if it’s sustainable and the losses are manageable then we’re still there.”

It’s been over two years since Singh first arrived at Pools to help steady the ship. And while he’s been able to do that, the amount of investment required has been far greater than initially projected.

“The amount of money we’re losing, I committed myself to £1 million going in and the idea was to get in, tidy things up and hopefully get other people to come in and hopefully put money in,” he told BBC Radio Tees Sport.

“My thought was with Jeff [Stelling] fronting it, more people would come to the table once they see a clearer picture but that hasn’t happened. That’s not through lack of trying but we want to try and bring the right people here.

“I’m £2.1, 2.2m at the moment and that can’t happen because we’ve only had two seasons so the cuts had to be made with or without coronavirus, it’s just thrown more uncertainty into the pot so we’ve got to take it week by week and month by month.”

Looking to the future he added: “The plan for next season is to stay full time and give the manager a decent budget to try and get into the play-offs.”

Pools have been in discussions with the Supporters’ Trust regarding potential investment with fans also setting up a ‘budget booster’ fundraiserthis week which received over £6,000 in its opening 24 hours.